Vern is technically correct that the AFP data steam is not slated for removal from IBM i that I know of .
However let's be honest who wants to continue using and investing resources in AFP long term unless you like manual overlay creation.
AFP is an outdated and painful technology to work with and IBM sold off its printing division which subsequently is removing support for AFP utilities and Infoprint Designer and is recommending 3rd party alternatives, thus the intent of the marketing email.
There are no fewer than 5-6 manual process steps to create an overlay and that method appears to be still available if you like pain.
If not then you should consider tools like our iForms software to modernize your form generation processes and do push button preview during design.
Hope that calm's Verns excitement since I know he uses AFP heavily :-)
And if you're looking to modernize your form processes take the opportunity to schedule an iForms demo and move towards the future.
http://www.helpsystems.com
Regards,
Richard Schoen
Director of Document Management
e. richard.schoen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
p. 952.486.6802
w. helpsystems.com
------------------------------
message: 7
date: Thu, 8 Dec 2016 09:08:02 -0600
from: Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Help Systems' email about AFP support discontinued at 7.3 -
not true!
Just got an email from Help Systems saying that AFP is not supported on
IBM i 7.3 - this is not the case!
What is no longer supported is the 5770-AF1 product, Advanced Function
Printing __Utilities__ - my emphasis on __Utilities__ a la Chuck Pence'
newsgroup formatting! :)
There is no indication that the AFP data stream and protocol are no
longer supported - just this and one other tool for designing pages.
(InfoPrint Designer is also no longer supported - I thought that had
gone away some time ago.)
So an unfortunate over-enthusiastic misunderstanding, eh, what?
Regards
Vern
midrange.com
